The Great Thief

When he heard this, Lu Li was put in an awkward position.

Lu Li expected him to not be able to afford it, but 30,000 gold was clearly just a small portion of his wealth. In the entire guild, there were not many players could take out 30,000 gold like this.

Shen Wansan probably didn’t even have more than 10,000 gold on him and he was a businessman.

Not only were most players unable to afford that many gold coins, but they also couldn’t bear for their gold to depreciate. Inn a game like this, the value of gold coins would inevitably decrease over time.

It was only someone like Her Tears, a true tycoon, who didn’t care about the price of gold.

“Is it not enough? I can go to the black market to get some more…” Her Tears saw that Lu Li had a strange look on his face and quickly offered to increase his price.

“Er… it’s not that it’s not enough – it’s too much. I asked Shen Wansan and he said that this was worth about 16,000 gold. You just have to give me 15,000,” Lu Li explained, then continued, “If it weren’t for the fact that the guild’s funds are becoming a little tight, I wouldn’t even want that much money from you.”

“You just want 15,000?” Her Tears was shocked.

Such an exquisite item couldn’t even be purchased at 25,000 gold, let alone 15,000 gold. It wasn’t that Shen Wansan was lying to Lu Li; he had quoted its value correctly. However, if there was no one in the market willing to sell an item, it didn’t matter how much money you had.

Currently, only the star players had Epic equipment.

The major guilds usually organized thousands of players and spent a lot of money on Potions and repairs to fight a Wild Boss for the very small possibility of getting an Epic item.

“15,000 is fine. That should take care of the whole guild,” Lu Li said.

“Oh, thanks Boss,” Her Tears said. He didn’t want to be too polite either, because he wasn’t an outsider. He happily accepted the Ring, but he currently had no way of wearing it. While it had a few slots, he would normally have to wait until level 50 before equipping it.

Her Tears couldn’t wait to go training.

Frankly speaking, this was the first time Lu Li had seen 15,000 gold coins. Although it didn’t affect him much, if he had received 15,000 gold coins like this in his previous life for the guild, he would have taken them and run. But right now, it was just an emotional feeling.

After transferring what he had to Shen Wansan, the total amount of gold the guild now had was 40,000. This could be used to purchase equipment and materials.

By the time the Spring Festival came around, all guild members would be entitled to a certain number of equipment and materials at a lower price than the market rate. This was how the major guilds rewarded their ordinary members.

Lu Li recalled the painful discovery that there was almost no money left after the first half of the year.

If it weren’t for the fact that Ruling Sword was currently under the scrutiny of various powerful companies, and he had managed to get treatment for his sister, his rebirth really would have been a failure.

Her Tears wasn’t really going to buy an Epic ring that wouldn’t appear on the market for another 2-3 months for just 15,000 gold. He traded his 15,000 gold for items in the guild warehouse, then threw them all back into the warehouse.

In addition to Her Tears, the other guild executives were also giving their best efforts. In short, Ruling Sword’s funds managed to reach 80,000 gold in a very brief period of time.

Fortunately, all of this investment was not without its rewards. At least now, Ruling Sword would not be any worse than the other major guilds in terms of the New Year benefits.

In fact, 80,000 gold coins was really only a drop in the bucket. On average, each member wouldn’t even receive 1 gold coin if it was evenly split. It was actually a change in attitude – if the guild executives were able to gather 80,000 gold coins for the guild, that meant all the members of Ruling Sword were truly treated like brothers.

They also knew that this amount of gold coins was the limit for what even the top players could do.

In fact, this included the combined earnings of Wandering and Azure Sea Breeze over the past three or four months.

Fortunately, after the end of the competition, there would be a prize as well as the ticket payments for each match. This large amount of money would be used to repay the executives and also bring in more funds for the guild.

In the following days, Ruling Sword competed in a series of matches.

If the schedule was too tight, it would affect the players. After all, everyone would feel tired after a day of fighting, especially if there were two matches in the same day. However, the good news was that Ruling Sword didn’t face any strong opponents. With this momentum, they soon made it into the top 100.

After entering the top 100, the major guilds were now being pitted against one another.

Ordinary players would often find that they were being completely outclassed, but they didn’t attribute it to any unfairness on the part of the game itself. Most of them were happy just for an opportunity to see a star player in action.

Perhaps the main thing for attracting new players was the hope that they could be the new players to rise into stardom.

Lu Li had run into a few new players. In the match of Ruling Sword against Eternal Kingdom, Lu Li defeated Thief Midnight Ghost in the single rounds, but lost more than half his HP. After all, Midnight Ghost was also a top Thief in the professional circle.

Then, he encountered a Paladin player, who previously wasn’t the best Paladin in Eternal Kingdom – Tears in the Wind.

This was a name Lu Li had heard of, but couldn’t remember much about. Although he was guarding with much discipline, he was still being hit by some sudden attacks, which flustered Lu Li.

Tears of the Wind actually managed to break through his Enhanced Stealth.

Lu Li’s previous thought of defeating all their players at once disappeared.

If this Paladin could break through a Thief’s Stealth, then there was a real possibility that he could defeat a Thief too.

Lu Li knew that he didn’t have much time, so he moved decisively and rushed right into the Paladin from the front. Thieves couldn’t defeat Paladins in a frontal assault like this, but Lu Li wasn’t an ordinary Thief – he had slightly more crowd-control ability.

When Lu Li finally fell, the Paladin only had 20% HP remaining.

Moonlight only needed 30 seconds after that to finish him off.

In fact, other than his ability to break Stealth, Tears in the Wind wasn’t that much better. At least in terms of combat ability, Lu Li and Moonlight were still a cut above the rest.

Even so, Tears of the Wind had now become one of the most convincing players to receive a promotion.

He was a player who was a threat to Lu Li, who could keep Lu Li busy, who was perhaps was even hated by Lu Li and had defeated Lu Li in a fight… Public opinion was a strange thing – when Lu Li rose as a newcomer, the ordinary players loved him, but now, they hoped to see someone defeat him.

Lu Li was left with a heavy heart after the match.

He wasn’t worried about Tears of the Wind, even though he couldn’t defeat him withs a frontal assault. He was worried about his normal attacks.

How did Tears of the Wind manage to break his Stealth? It couldn’t have been a Skill – Lu Li had never heard of such a skill before, so it had to be an item effect. If an item like this fell into the hands of someone like Green Flag Wine…